Monday, April 30, 2018

The Taliban has turned down an offer from President Ashraf Ghani to join the much-delayed parliamentary elections in Afghanistan. In a speech made earlier this month in Kabul, while launching the voter registration process, the Afghan President appealed to the group that has been waging an increasingly bloody insurgency to shun violence and participate in the democratic process.

“Transparent elections are the only tool through which political reforms can take place and the politics of coercion can be replaced with productive politics,” he said, reiterating his offer to negotiate a peace deal with the Taliban made in February. “The Taliban can act as a political party and utilise this opportunity and the peace offer,” Mr. Ghani said. “Afghan people should no longer be subject to suffering from the ongoing war.”

WNU Editor: In all my years of following the Taliban I can say with confidence that the only time that the Taliban were ever interested in participating in peace talks was with the expectation that everyone was going to leave, and that they would then assume power. Bottom line .... there is going to be no peace in Afghanistan until the people in Afghanistan say enough is enough .... which I do not see happening any time soon.

Doha, Qatar - Eight years after the so-called Arab Spring, the region is facing the prospect of another phase of revolts due to pressing financial, urbanisation and unemployment challenges, experts have argued.

Several Arab leaders were deposed in the aftermath of the popular 2010 and 2011 uprisings, while others' grip on power was loosened.

Speaking during the 12th Al Jazeera Forum, held this weekend in Qatar's capital, Doha, a number of regional experts said it is "inevitable" that change will come to a region with one of the world's highest percentages of youth.

"Massive uncontrolled urbanisation, pressure on the job markets are among other socioeconomic factors the leading causes behind greater expectations of the youth in the Arab societies," said Mohamed Mahjoub Haroon, professor of social science at the University of Khartoum, in Sudan.

If the anti-aircraft equipment is attacked, there will be ‘catastrophic consequences,’ warns Moscow

There is no shortage of reasons to be concerned about the entangled drama unfolding in Syria, as Russia maneuvers on a shifting landscape that could see Israel and Iran collide in a direct confrontation.

Commentary in The Wall Street Journal on Monday urged caution on the part of Moscow, arguing that Russia has already nudged the regional arch-enemies closer to war. A recent Israeli strike on a base in Syria that killed seven Iranians, including four Quds Force officers, might have been swept under the rug by Iran, according to the author Dennis Ross, but Russia’s decision to call out Israel for the strike has forced Iran’s hand, increasing the likelihood of retaliation to save face.

Against this backdrop, Israel is warning Russia that air defense systems to be delivered to Syria will be in the Israeli air force’s crosshairs. Russia’s Defense Ministry confirmed reports this week that it planned to send Russian S-300 defense systems to the Syrian regime of President Bashar al-Assad, prompting a response from Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman.

WNU Editor: Russian efforts to act as a mediator in the Middle East are not working .... and they have failed in trying to defuse tensions that have been ongoing for decades. In fact .... a case can now be made that they are making the situation worse. Am I surprised .... no. While Syria will try to accomodate Russian interests, Iran will not. And right now Iran is determined to be the dominant player in the Middle East .... whether the Russians like it or not. The problem is that the Russians now find themselves between Israel and Iran/Syria ..... a definite no-win situation for Moscow.

Israeli defense officials have told their American and Russian counterparts that if Iranian-backed forces attack Israel from inside Syria, Jerusalem will not hold back from retaliating with direct strikes against Tehran or other targets in Iran.

The officials delivered the message ahead of a national security statement expected Monday from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in response to Iranian threats to hit Israel after recent strikes on Tehran-backed assets in Syria, according to a report by Haaretz, an Israeli newspaper.

The developments come amid growing concern in Washington that Israel and Iran are on the verge of a clash that could spill dangerously beyond Syria, where there were reports Monday that missile strikes had killed more than two-dozen mostly Iranian forces supporting the Syrian government of Bashar Assad.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stepped up pressure on the United States to pull out of a 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, holding a primetime address on Israeli TV to present what he called evidence of a secret Iranian nuclear weapons program.

Intelligence experts and diplomats said he did not seem to have presented a “smoking gun” showing that Iran had violated the agreement, although he may have helped make a case on behalf of hawks in the U.S. administration who want to scrap it.

Most of the purported evidence Netanyahu unveiled dated to the period before the 2015 accord was signed, although he said Iran had also kept important files on nuclear technology since then, and continued adding to its “nuclear weapons knowledge”.

Tehran dismissed Netanyahu as “the boy who cried wolf”, and called his presentation propaganda.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says that his intelligence services have obtained documents proving that Iran maintained a secret nuclear program in violation of a landmark agreement Tehran reached with the West. Netanyahu points to a slide which is purported to show 'massive safes' where Iran's 'secret archive' were stored

U.S. officials and congressional insiders view the disclosure Monday by Israel of Iran's ongoing efforts to develop a nuclear weapon as game over for the landmark nuclear deal, telling the Washington Free Beacon that new evidence of Iran's top secret nuclear workings makes it virtually impossible for President Donald Trump to remain in the agreement.

Senior Trump administration officials confirmed the findings as authentic and praised Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's for disclosing thousands of secret documents proving Iran lied about its past work on a nuclear warhead, telling the Free Beacon the revelation was a "powerful presentation" by Israel outlining why the Iran deal must be fixed or killed.

U.S. officials who reviewed the secret documents confirmed their authenticity and said that Israel has shared the information fully with the United States, most likely to help build the case for Trump to abandon the nuclear deal, rather than try to fix what the White House views as a series of insurmountable flaws.

WNU Editor: Apparently the documentation of the entire Iran nuclear was put in an insecure building in safes .... that were then broken into by Israeli intelligence .... Insane Israeli operation smuggled 110,000 secret nuclear files out of Iran (Washington Examiner). Clearly the Iranians did not value the security of these documents. As to the intellgeince that was retrieved, some are saying that this is not a surprise, and that these programs were known to inspectors in the past .... Netanyahu's Bizarre PowerPoint Presentation on Iran (The Atlantic). What's my take .... todays disclosures will be used by President Trump to terminate the Iran nuclear agreement before May 12.

Two weeks of protests have been suspended as Nikol Pashinian holds talks with other political leaders ahead of a key vote in parliament. He only needs six more votes from other parties to become prime minister.

Armenian opposition leader Nikol Pashinian was formally nominated by his supporters for the vacant post of prime minister on Monday. He needs support from several more lawmakers to be assured of winning the vote on Tuesday in parliament.

The formal nomination is the latest step in Pashinian's progress from leader of the protests which forced unpopular Prime Minister Serzh Sargsyan to resign to premier with a reform program for the former Soviet republic.

WNU Editor: Armenian opposition leader Nikol Pashinyan is the only candidate that has been nominated for Prime Minister .... so yes .... it looks like he will have the job. A remarkable change in Armenia after two weeks of peaceful protests.

More News On Armenian Opposition Leader Being The Sole Candidate For The Interim Prime Minister Job

WNU Editor: Iran has a security problem in keeping its secrets. This is far more than what I expected. Supporters of the Iranian nuclear deal will say that this is old stuff .... that Iran has changed, and this evidence no longer applies. I hope they are right.

Update: President Trump has already responded to Israel Prime Minister Netanyahu's speech .... says he has always been right when it comes to Iran.

* Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave a nationally televised address on Monday
* Premier said Israel recently uncovered 55,000 documents and 183 CDs of information from Iran's 'nuclear archives'
* The documents prove that Iran has maintained a secret nuclear weapons program in violation of the landmark 2015 nuclear deal, Netanyahu says
* Netanyahu says the documents were moved to a 'highly secret' location in Tehran after the nuclear deal was signed
* Israel is urging Trump administration to withdraw from nuclear deal when issue comes up for a decision in 12 days

Israel's prime minister says that his intelligence services have obtained documents proving that Iran has maintained a secret nuclear program in violation of a landmark agreement Tehran reached with the West.

Benjamin Netanyahu gave a televised address on Monday evening during which he presented documents allegedly stolen from inside Iran.

* Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will make a speech this evening
* His office said the Prime Minister will 'disclose dramatic news about Iran'
* Addresses 'significant development regarding the nuclear agreement with Iran'

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is set to make a televised speech this evening to reveal 'dramatic news' about Iran, his office said today.

Netanyahu has called a special meeting of his Security Cabinet before he is set to speak on a 'significant development' on the Iran nuclear deal.

His speech follows the visit by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo yesterday, during which the pair discussed Iran and the accord.

* President Trump should win a Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to end a standoff with North Korea over nuclear weapons, according to South Korea's president.
* Moon Jae-in said Monday: "President Trump should win the Nobel Peace Prize. What we need is only peace."
* Trump threatened war with North Korea several times and pushed harsh sanctions on the country after its nuclear and missile tests.
* Moon thinks that hardline move could have tipped the balance toward a deal.

President Donald Trump should win the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to end the standoff with North Korea over its nuclear-weapons program, South Korean President Moon Jae-in said on Monday.

"President Trump should win the Nobel Peace Prize. What we need is only peace," Moon told a cabinet meeting, according to a media release.

Moon met with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on Friday, where the pair pledged to end hostilities and work toward the "complete denuclearization" at the first inter-Korean summit since 2007.

WNU Editor: As I had mentioned in a previous post .... it is waaaayyyy too early to think about who gets a Nobel Prize or not. But the South Korean President's remarks does tell me one thing .... behind the scenes President Trump probably played a far greater role in getting North Korea to the negotiating table than what we have been told. Afterall .... President Moon did try last year to get Kim Jong-Un to the negotiating table, and he failed miserably. It was only when the White House made it a priority at the end of 2017 to push for the imposition of real and serious sanctions that North Korea responded to President Moon's invitation to the Olympics .... thereby leading to last week's summit. As to my own personal opinion ... if everything does work out and the process of reconciliation and peace on the Korean peninsula does occur .... the Nobel Peace Prize sould be given to Trump, Xi, Moon, and Kim.

Numerous countries are being considered for the MEETING, but would Peace House/Freedom House, on the Border of North & South Korea, be a more Representative, Important and Lasting site than a third party country? Just asking!

President Trump on Monday suggested his meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un take place in the Truce Village between the borders of North Korea and South Korea.

“Numerous countries are being considered for the MEETING, but would Peace House/Freedom House, on the Border of North & South Korea, be a more Representative, Important and Lasting site than a third party country? Just asking!” Trump wrote on Twitter, referring to the location where the leaders of North Korea and South Korea recently met.

* WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT
* ISIS blasts in the central Shash Darak area of Kabul, Afghanistan, have killed at least 25 and left dozens injured
* A group of journalists had gathered to cover an initial attack, carried out by a suicide bomber on a motorbike
* But another suicide attacker, posing as a reporter among the journalists, then set off second deadly explosion
* An AFP photographer and several local journalists were among those killed in twin blasts claimed by ISIS
* Hours later 11 children were killed in a suicide attack on a foreign convoy in the southern province of Kandahar
* Meanwhile, BBC says one of its Afghan reporters, Ahmad Shah, has been killed in Khost province with a local official saying he was shot dead

A BBC reporter has been shot dead in Afghanistan on the same day that a group of journalists was killed in a bomb blast in the capital Kabul, it has emerged.

Afghan reporter Ahmad Shah, 29, was killed in an attack in the eastern Khost province on what has been the deadliest day for journalists in the country since the Taliban's fall in 2001.

Earlier in the day, AFP photographer Shah Marai and several local journalists were among those killed after a man pretending to be a reporter carried out a suicide attack in the capital Kabul.

Blasts reportedly hit Hama and Aleppo countryside in what a military source called 'a new aggression'.

Syrian state TV says that rockets have struck military positions in the countryside of Hama and Aleppo provinces.

A military source was quoted as saying by SANA that the "new aggression" by Syria's enemies had taken place at around 10:30pm (19:30 GMT) on Sunday.

The state TV outlet aired images of what it said was the explosions. It had earlier reported that successive blasts were heard in the Hama and Aleppo countryside and that authorities were investigating the cause.

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Joseph F. Dunford Jr. (L) and US Secretary of Defense James Mattis talk before a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee on Capitol Hill April 26, 2018 in Washington, DC. Brendan Smialowski, AFP

US Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said Thursday that French special operations forces arrived in Syria over the past two weeks to help boost US-led efforts against the Islamic State group.

Speaking to senior lawmakers in Washington, Mattis responded to a question about whether the United States was planning on pulling out of Syria -- something President Donald Trump has said would happen "very soon."

Right now, "we are not withdrawing," Mattis told the Senate Armed Services Committee.

In recent months, soldiers with the Army’s 101st Airborne Division were the first to receive the services’ new high-tech 9mm pistol engineered to give dismounted infantry a vastly increased ability to fight and close with an enemy in caves, tunnels, crawl spaces, houses and other close quarter combat scenarios.

Service weapons developers and soldiers say the new M17 and M18 pistol, designed as a next-generation handgun to follow the Army’s current M9 Beretta, is expected to substantially change combat tactics, techniques and strategies for dismounted soldiers on-the-move.

“You can close with the enemy in close quarter combat and engage the enemy with one hand. It is tough to do this with the M9,” Lt. Col. Martin O’Donnell, spokesman for the 101st Airborne, told reporters several months ago.

Few pieces of gear are steeped in as much martial history as the KA-BAR Fighting Utility Knife — from stories of brutal close-quarters combat to myths about the knives being so durable that they were sent along with wooden shipping crates instead of crowbars during World War II.

Today marks the 120th anniversary of the company that gave the military its most iconic blade.

Even the name KA-BAR has its roots in legend. As the story goes, a fur trapper in the 1900s wrote a letter about killing a grizzly bear with a knife from the Union Cutlery Company, which began producing its first knives in 1898. The letter was so smudged, all that was made out from the passage was: “K A Bar.” And so the KA-BAR trademark was born, and years later, Union Cutlery was renamed after the brand.

China's military put out a strong message on Taiwan on Saturday, vowing to "safeguard the territory of our motherland."

The People's Liberation Army air force released a video and series of commemorative envelopes showing recent Chinese air force missions around the island, which Beijing views as a breakaway province.

"It is the sacred duty of any PLA pilot to safeguard the territory of our motherland," reads the text on the envelopes, which feature pictures of PLA warplanes and pilots on flights near Taiwan.

The democratic island of Taiwan (officially the Republic of China) is separated from China (the People's Republic) by a thin stretch of water and has been self-governed since a bloody civil war ended in 1949.

A group of Iranian Twitter users are spreading protest messages by writing slogans on banknotes.

"Banknotes are our un-censorable messengers," one user wrote, referring to a rumoured plan to permanently block the popular messaging app Telegram, which is by far the most popular digital communication tool in Iran.

Slogans included "I am an overthrower".

Some of the sayings were originally chanted during mass anti-establishment protests at the turn of the year.

In late December, demonstrators took to the streets then to express their dissatisfaction with the social and economic situation in the country.

Telegram was believed to have been the main platform people used to obtain and share information about the protests, which took place across Iran from late December 2017 to January 2018.

WNU Editor: I do not think the mullahs who run Iran are as strong as we in the West like to believe they are. The protests are not stopping, and measures by the Iranian government to limit news information and social media is back-firing.

We've been able to uncover a lot of details about the secretive reconnaissance squadron and an obscure detachment that preceded its establishment.

One of the U.S. Air Force’s most secretive drone squadron appears to have been hiding, at least in part, in plain sight for at least five years. Following an in-depth investigation, including official statements and information we previously obtained via the Freedom of Information Act, we at The War Zone can now provide an exclusive and unprecedented look at what is now known as the 44th Reconnaissance Squadron and offer insight as to what tasks the shadowy unit might be performing today.

The 44th Reconnaissance Squadron officially stood up at Creech Air Force Base on April 1, 2015. At that time, it joined the 732nd Operations Group, part of the Air Force’s main drone unit, the 432nd Wing, which also calls the base located north of Las Vegas in Indian Springs, Nevada home.

The Beijing visit and Kim’s next stop at Seoul may undercut U.S. advantage ahead of the Trump-Kim submit.

The emerging formation of a possibly more hawkish U.S. foreign policy may had played a big factor behind Kim Jong-un’s sudden secretive visit to Beijing ahead of his upcoming talks with President Trump. The Trump administration's recent cabinet designations (i.e. Bolton, Pompeo) and strongly worded official documents (i.e. NDS, NSS) provide face and grounding to this transformation. The DPRK Supreme Leader seem to attach high importance to the upcoming meeting with his U.S. counterpart, realizing that serious consequences may take place if the talks failed.

WNU Editor: North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un has a lot of things to worry about .... a few Washington hawks around President Trump is not one of them. Personally ....I am confident that a Trump-Kim summit will be successful. It is in everyone's interest to have a successful summit, and I am sure they will find common ground.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un shakes hands with Suh-hoon, South Korea's chief of the National Intelligence Service (NIS) at the truce village of Panmunjom inside the demilitarized zone separating the two Koreas, South Korea, April 27, 2018. Picture taken on April 27, 2018. Korea Summit Press Pool/Pool via Reuters

Shedding tears behind South Korean President Moon Jae-in and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un after the two leaders announced a historic agreement on Friday was a man who has worked for two decades to set up unlikely dialogue between old enemies.

Nearly 18 years after Suh Hoon, a South Korean intelligence official, traveled to Pyongyang to persuade reclusive North Korean leader Kim Jong Il to hold an unprecedented first summit in the North Korean capital in 2000, he watched Kim’s son pledging peace on the Korean peninsula on Friday - this time just south of the heavily militarized border.

Friday was the first time any North Korean leader set foot on South Korean soil since the 1950-53 Korean War left the country divided and the two neighbors in a technical state of conflict.

The landmark encounter came less than a year after South Korea’s liberal president Moon took office and quickly tapped Suh as chief of the National Intelligence Service, saying he was “the right person” to revive inter-Korean ties strained over North Korea’s pursuit of nuclear-armed missiles.

WNU editor: I can only imagine the back-door meetings, claudestine trips, and secret arrangements that must have occured to pull this off. And in the middle of all of this .... the intel chiefs and their organizations making sure that this happens.

About Me

I have been involved in numerous computer science projects since the 1980s, as well as developing numerous web projects since 1996.
These blogs are a summation of all the information that I read and catalog pertaining to the subjects that interest me.